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New York Is Open for Business, Cuomo Style

Danny Hakim of the New York Times tells us how state government works under Andrew Cuomo, in an in-depth investigation of the Empire State Development Corporation:

New York State’s economic development agency created a new position last June, and then found a candidate to fill it: a young man named Willard Younger, who had just graduated from Colgate University with a degree in classics and religion. He became a special projects associate, at a salary of $45,000 a year, according to state personnel records.

His father, Stephen P. Younger, is a lawyer and power broker in legal circles who was a member of one of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s transition teams. He has also donated $26,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns over the years, disclosure records show.

The next month, the agency hired 23-year-old Andrew Moelis, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, for another new position, strategic planning associate, at a salary of $75,000 a year.

Shortly before Mr. Moelis’s first day of work, his father, Ron Moelis, a prominent real estate developer, gave $25,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign, according to the records.

Check out the return on investment available to political donations: give $25,000, get $75,000 within a year. I wonder if any of Mr. Moelis’s real estate developments offered such an ROI. As I wrote many years ago in the Wall Street Journal:

Business people know that you have to invest to make money. Businesses invest in factories, labor, research and development, marketing, and all the other processes that bring goods to consumers and, they hope, lead to profits. They also invest in political processes that may yield profits.

If more money can be made by investing in Washington than by drilling another oil well, money will be spent there….

Every dollar spent by the federal government ends up in someone’s pocket as a salary, a transfer payment, a subsidy, a purchase or a loan. But there are other valuable services available, too: regulations that eliminate or hamstring your competitors, for instance, or a tax provision that induces consumers to purchase your product.

But “jobs for the boys” can also be a way to reward political supporters. And if it’s a job for your own boy, so much the better.

Agencies like this can also be very helpful to a politician with larger ambitions:

Empire State has also hired friends of Mr. Cuomo who may help form his political brain trust should he decide to run for president in 2016.

James P. Rubin, a former State Department spokesman, was hired at the agency in 2011 as counselor on competitiveness and international affairs, with a salary of $150,000 a year. Mr. Rubin’s appointment was seen by political consultants as a move by Mr. Cuomo to add a foreign policy hand to his stable.

Empire State hired 49 people in the first 20 months of the Cuomo administration, according to personnel records obtained by The Times. Nearly a third were the governor’s political associates, donors and friends, or their relatives, the records and interviews show.

At least seven of the new hires with connections were placed in newly created positions.

We hear a lot about austerity in government today. We hear that “state and local government coffers [are] empty.” We hear that spending has been “cut to the bone.” I’d say that the Empire State Development Corporation would be a good place to save the New York taxpayers $741.8 million this year.